Monday, June 04, 2007

China's AVS codec gains more top-tier support

SHANGHAI — More top-tier chipmakers are offering support for a Chinese codec that will be used in the domestic IPTV, satellite and possibly the cable TV market.

Both Broadcom Corp. and Conexant Systems Inc. are working on chips for China's Audio Video Coding Standard (AVS). They join STMicroelectronics, which already supports the codec in software, and is spinning a hardware optimized version that will be ready by the fourth quarter.

In that same time period, one of Broadcom's 65-nanometer based products will include custom hardware accelerators to support AVS, said Aidan O'Rourke, a Broadcom executive in charge of IPTV products.

Conexant plans to have its silicon ready for sampling by the first quarter of 2008, a spokeswoman said. Texas Instruments is also able to offer DSP-based support.

A handful of Chinese chip companies are also targeting AVS for set-top boxes. SVA Co and Beijing-based United Source Coding Co. have developed an encoder and Longjing Microelectronics Co., Grandview Semiconductor, and Celestial Semiconductor are working on decoders.